Page 77 of Cadaver Lab: Mind Over Murder

But it was gone now. It was okay. The brain had gone over the side.

Sunk.

Safely.

“We’re sure this will work?” she asked, afraid to feel relief. To believe it could really be over.

“How could it not? The Mariana Trench is the deepest point in the ocean.”

“But what if Dean missed the trench?”

“Even if he did, the ocean floor surrounding the trench is still miles deep.”

“How many miles deep?” she asked.

With a sigh, Liam consulted his cell phone and after a few moments of tapping on the screen, he said, “It ranges from two and a half to three point eight miles.” He glanced up at her. “What is the maximum distance the ghosts could travel again?”

“Three and a half miles,” she said.

She did the math. The results weren’t good. If the brain landed on the section that was only two and a half miles down, the ghost would still be able to travel above the ocean surface. A whole mile. Right into the shipping lanes.

“Liam. That’s not deep enough. Should we worry?”

“Nah. It’ll be fine. Chances are the lead vessel sunk into the trench and is safely seven miles under water right now. Even if it didn’t, we don’t know if the maximum distance is the same when the ghost is traveling through water instead of air. We didn’t test that. And wasn’t Alice the one helping them measure? What are the chances they were completely accurate? I can imagine her rounding up. I think we’re fine.”

Natalie pictured Alice in her bedazzled biker cut coordinating the geographical test with Gabe, the other ghosts and her trike gang, all using their trike odometer to measure distance. Liam was probably right. They were fine.

But then she envisioned a Navy ship floating right above the brain ghost’s final resting place on the ocean floor. A floor that might or might not be deep enough. She imagined the tales told by sailors describing terrifying shipboard encounters with an entity they couldn’t identify. Reports treated as unbelievable like those of the Navy pilots who told about their UFO sightings.

She tried to remember all Liam’s reasons why she shouldn’t worry, but couldn’t. But he had to be right. Right?

Glancing up at him, she forced a smile. “Yeah. You’re probably right. I’m sure it’ll be fine.”

She said it but she wasn’t sure she believed it.

Chapter Forty

“I finished!” Harper said after flinging open the front door of the shop and rushing inside just before closing time.

“That’s great. Finished what?” Natalie asked. She wanted to be a supportive friend but she needed more information.

“My book,” Harper said with a grin.

“The book you started writing the day after Pompous Doug told his wife to drop the lawsuit?”

“Yes.”

“Wow. That was only three weeks ago.”

“I know. But this one practically wrote itself.”

“That sounds like a writer’s dream come true. So what’s it about?”

“It’s a feel-good, found-family theme about how a whole town comes together to solve a murder and clear one of their own who’s been accused.”

Harper never did stray far from the facts for her fiction. It was probably why her sales were so strong among the locals. They all bought her books to see if she’d written about them.

“It sounds perfect.” Natalie didn’t remind Harper that during the worst of things she had vowed to never write about Mudville or any of its residents again.